It’s risky to place too much importance on who will be the Dodgers’ No. 5 starter when the season begins, just because that role fluctuates so much. So instead of trying to predict the winner, I’m going to pursue this from another angle: truth-based fiction.

March:Josh Lindblom has a sensational spring, but the Dodgers decide there’s no way he can handle a starter’s innings from April on, without being eased into the role via the minors. Scott Elbert also shows flashes of brilliance, but the team prefers he also wet his feet in Albuquerque, where John Ely (the new one, not the old one, though both will end up with stops in Chattanooga) is slated to spend most of the year. James McDonald is penciled in early for the bullpen. Charlie Haeger is denied meaningful innings. Russ Ortiz has one good start that generates a day’s worth of comeback stories, then implodes and is a non-factor. The longshot bids of Rule 5 Day acquisitions Carlos Monasterios and Armando Zerpa devolve into a slightly less longshot bid to become the seventh reliever.

That leaves Eric Stults. Despite his annual shutouts, the Dodgers don’t have any long-term faith in him, but with Stults out of minor-league options, they decide to give him first crack rather than throw a less experienced pitcher into the mix. The memory of McDonald’s April from last year still stings. Monasterios gets the (way) back-of-the-bullpen role, Zerpa is sent back on the Rule 5 highway, Ortiz goes to Albuquerque to find Shawn Estes’ old locker, and Haeger is released but doesn’t clear waivers.

April: Thanks to some rest-infused early season scheduling, the Dodgers don’t use a fifth starter until April 24 at Washington, an outing that finds Stults rusty but reasonably effective. He makes it through the capital city and his next start at home against Pittsburgh.

May: Before the month is out, Stults turns in the mediocre outing that confirms his limitations in the Dodgers’ eyes, and he is designated for assignment. Elbert, off to a strong start in Albuquerque, gets the callup.

June: Wear and tear on the staff — I’ll say Padilla, but it could be anyone — forces the Dodgers to bring up Lindblom to work alongside Elbert. McDonald wonders if he’ll ever be stretched out, but he becomes too valuable in the bullpen for the Dodgers to envision changing his role.

July: A four-game series in St. Louis right after the All-Star Break trashes the Dodger staff, though McDonald turns in a sterling four-inning relief stint that stops the bleeding in one game and rekindles thoughts of putting him back in the rotation. With the trade deadline approaching and the McCourt divorce case having been decided, there’s much talk about a deal. In the meantime, Ely is called upon to make a spot start, and Elbert gets a second wind after a poor stretch.

By the time the July 31 trading deadline comes, the Dodgers have a much better idea of what their starting pitching needs are. And that’s where I’m going to pause this speculation.

While few of the above plot twists might actually come true — the lack of need for a fifth starter for most of April could be enough to derail Stults’ chances of sticking, for example — the overall points are safe ones. No matter what happens in March:

1) Odds are, the Dodgers will run through several No. 5 starters.

2) Odds are, their collective performance will be good enough to allow the Dodgers to post a decent record in their outings, which is all you can really ask in a baseball world where virtually no team has a reliable No. 5 starter.

There are enough candidates for the fifth starter position that the Dodgers will have a low tolerance for failure. Unless none of them can do the job — and there’s no real reason to think all of them will fail to manage even a short hot streak — this part of the rotation will be less of a concern than some people think.

The Dodgers’ fortunes depend greatly on how their front four performs. If they can be relatively stable, the Dodger rotation will be fine — better than fine. If Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw, Hiroki Kuroda or Vicente Padilla develop a serious, prolonged problem, then the Dodgers could be in trouble.

Update: Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports tweets that Jeff Weaver has agreed to a minor-league deal with the Dodgers.

Correction: I misread the schedule somehow. The Dodgers will need a fifth starter April 11 at Florida and April 17 against San Francisco. Chalk up a couple of confidence-building victories for Stults?

“The best is yet to come for Andre Ethier.” That’s a tantalizing quote, one that contrasts my knee-jerk assumption that Ethier can’t possibly improve on his 2009 campaign, from Baseball HQ via Memories of Kevin Malone. There are also some new thoughts about Dodger Stadium park effects.

Elsewhere …

Which is more valuable, a sixth position player on the bench or a 12th pitcher? Over the past year, I’ve come to think that for teams like the Dodgers whose starters don’t go deep into games, the extra pitcher is worth more. Dave Cameron offers some interesting pro and con arguments at Fangraphs.

It’s the makeover moment of the year for the Dodgers: Casey Blake, beardless. I have to keep reminding myself that the $1 million donation by Blake and his wife, Abbie, to Indianola, Iowa schools is a bigger deal. But I have spent some time wondering whether looking younger will make Blake play younger. It’s completely logical, don’ t you think?

The year after Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell and Ron Cey first made the playoffs in 1974, the Dodgers finished 20 games out of first place.

The year after the Dodgers lost two consecutive World Series in 1977-78, they were in last place at the All-Star break.

The disappointing 1975 and 1979 seasons came with nary a cloud over Chavez Ravine to match the jejune gloom that fans today feel over Dodger ownership in the wake of Frank and Jamie McCourt’s divorce. Back in the 1970s, the leadership baton was successfully passed from Walter O’Malley to son Peter, with the widespread approval of the Dodger community – assuming that community even noticed the change, amid the stable ticket prices and cheap Double-Bagger peanuts.

Don Sutton turned 30 five days before Opening Day 1975. Garvey, Lopes, Russell, Cey, Steve Yeager, Bill Buckner, Andy Messersmith, and Doug Rau all were younger. The team was in its prime, but the Cincinnati Reds, whose biggest offseason acquisition was John Vuckovich (and his eight 1975 hits), fired up the Big Red Machine and annihilated rest of the National League West.

There would be a big lesson here about the dangers of standing pat – if the Reds hadn’t stood pat themselves. In other words, 1975 is a bad omen for the 2010 Dodgers – unless the 2009 Dodgers are the 1974 Reds.

Before you think me completely crazy, understand that I realize Russell Martin isn’t Johnny Bench, James Loney isn’t Tony Perez, Casey Blake isn’t Pete Rose and no combination of Blake DeWitt, Ronnie Belliard and Jamey Carroll could ever flap Joe Morgan’s elbow. But the point is that the coming Dodger season could go well or poorly – and whichever way it goes, it will probably have much less to do with Divorce Court than people believe.

Relative to the rest of the current NL, the Dodgers have considerable strengths in other areas, most notably the outfield and the bullpen. They’re a 95-win team that has retained about 75 percent of its talent, and the three principal losses – Randy Wolf, Orlando Hudson and Juan Pierre – figure to decline this year anyway, while a good portion of the team’s core has a chance to improve and Manny Ramirez has a good chance to avoid a 50-game suspension.

And contrary to what seems to be popular opinion in Los Angeles, the other NL contenders haven’t blown past the Dodgers, divorce or not. The league champion Phillies got Roy Halladay, though they gave up Cliff Lee to get him. They get to be the favorites, though not by any wide margin. No other team in the NL had an offseason that should make any Dodger fan nervous. Arizona might get a bounce-back season from Brandon Webb and added several players (at a cost), but has a 25-game gap to make up on Los Angeles. Milwaukee picked up Wolf and Doug Davis, but saw several players depart. And so on …

NL Team

2009 W-L

Notable 2010 arrivals

Notable 2010 departures

Dodgers

95-67

Jamey Carroll, Nick Green, Justin Miller

Randy Wolf, Orlando Hudson, Juan Pierre

Philadelphia

93-69

Roy Halladay, Placido Polanco

Cliff Lee, Pedro Feliz, Pedro Martinez

Colorado

92-70

Miguel Olivo, Tim Redding

Yorvit Torrealba, Jason Marquis

St. Louis

91-71

Brad Penny, Ruben Gotay

Joel Pineiro, Rick Ankiel, Khalil Greene

San Francisco

88-74

Aubrey Huff, Mark DeRosa

Ryan Garko, Bobby Howry, Justin Miller

Florida

87-75

Jose Veras, Derrick Turnbow

Nick Johnson, Ross Gload, Jeremy Hermida

Atlanta

86-76

Melky Cabrera, Troy Glaus, Billy Wagner

Javier Vazquez, Adam LaRoche, Rafael Soriano

Chicago

83-78

Marlon Byrd, Xavier Nady

Milton Bradley, Rich Harden

Milwaukee

80-82

Randy Wolf, Doug Davis

Mike Cameron, Felipe Lopez, J.J. Hardy

Cincinnati

78-84

Orlando Cabrera, Aroldis Chapman

Kip Wells, Willy Taveras

San Diego

75-87

Jon Garland, Scott Hairston, Jerry Hairston, Jr.

Kevin Kouzmanoff, Edgar Gonzalez, Henry Blanco

Houston

74-88

Brett Myers, Pedro Feliz

Miguel Tejada, Jose Valverde

New York

70-92

Jason Bay, Kelvim Escobar

Carlos Delgado, Gary Sheffield

Arizona

70-92

Edwin Jackson, Bobby Howry, Adam LaRoche

Max Scherzer, Chad Tracy

Pittsburgh

62-99

Akinori Iwamura, Ryan Church, D.J. Carrasco

Matt Capps, Jesse Chavez

Washington

59-103

Jason Marquis, Ivan Rodriguez, Brian Bruney

Livan Hernandez, Josh Bard

The 2010 season could go either way. The Dodgers have the talent to contend for a chance to upset the American League champion in the World Series (we’ll get to the team’s inferiority to the Yankees and Red Sox another day). They are also, like every other team including the Phillies, vulnerable to key injuries or prolonged slumps that could send them tumbling.

The 1979 Dodgers, who seemed to have everything going for them entering the season except the departure of Tommy John, lost 31 of 41 games leading into the All-Star Game, digging themselves a hole so deep that not even a league-leading 43 victories after the break could save them. And younger fans will certainly remember what happened to the Dodgers from 2004 to 2005.

On the other hand, the Dodgers rose from a heartbreaking season’s end in 1980 to a World Series title in 1981 not because of any outside acquisitions, but on the precociousness of Fernando Valenuzela and Pedro Guerrero. And though the Dodgers benefited from Kirk Gibson falling into their laps in 1988, they also had to overcome the loss of a key starting pitcher, Bob Welch.

If the Dodgers falter, it will undoubtedly be seen through the prism of the McCourts’ divorce, with everyone pointing out how the Dodgers didn’t get the reinforcements they needed. But not getting enough reinforcements is a historical pattern for the Dodgers. No Dodger team, in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, has ever made the postseason three years in a row. None. The 2010 Dodgers have a chance to be the first (not to mention a chance to be the first to win a World Series in 22 years). Their season will ride a thin line between ecstasy and disappointment.

There probably aren’t any Dodger followers, including myself, that don’t wish the team had more talent entering the 2010 season, that don’t wonder if an opportunity to get over the top is being squandered. You always want your odds to be the best they can be. But they never are.

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